THE CONTEXT OF ADULTERATION OF MEAT PRODUCTS: FINDINGS, CONSEQUENCES AND METHODS OF PROOF

• Autor(a) principal: Ribeiro, Sarah Amado
• Data de Publicação: 2022
• Outros Autores: da Cruz, Alex Silva, da Cruz, Aparecido Divino
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Estudos (Goiânia. Online)
• Texto Completo: https://seer.pucgoias.edu.br/index.php/estudos/article/view/8808
• topic: Carne equina; Adulteração; PCR; LAMP.; Adulteração de produtos cárneos

Food adulteration is a common type of food fraud, which occurs after intentional or unintentional substitution, addition or abstraction of proper components in a food product. A variety of substances or materials can be used as food adulterants, leading to mismatch between food product claims and food product characteristics. Despite being an illegal practice, it has happened frequently and especially associated with food harboring high commercial value. Meat products have been often implicated in fraud when the advertised product is replaced by other unspecified and inferior meat variety, sometimes of different species. Excessive consumption of meat, especially in its processed form, denotes a higher health risk. Moreover, elevated risks are aggravated when adulteration occurs, for instance, the replacement of beef with equine meat, from horses of doubtful origin and sanitary conditions. As a solution to this problem, there are sensory, physical, chemical, and molecular methods for detecting adulterant of food components. When it comes to the identification of horse meat suspected of being the adulterant, PCR and LAMP methods are common applied, both with sensitivity and specificity well proven by several independent studies. LAMP allows the detection contaminant DNA in vitro amplified and revealed by colorimetric assay. Thus, it has shown potential for field applications during routines of food integrity inspections and certification, under the guidelines of regulatory policies to ensure the commercialization of healthy products and food safety.